The Collect! Member Resource Center is there when you need assistance 24/7/365. Online Help and the access to the technical Support Ticket system are always open. Our technicians are on 3 continents to better serve world-wide needs in any timezone.

Testing Your Conversion

Make it a priority to test your conversion. You will
want to test a complete collection or accounting cycle.

Testing is well worth every minute spent. Often, you
can optimize the conversion routine. Testing may
point out gaps in the accounting process caused by
the converted data. Testing gives you important
information to use when you are ready for the final
cutover.

When you have finalized your data sets and
created the import routine, doing this test run gives
you two great bonuses.

One bonus is that you will be able to benchmark, or
time the conversion process. This helps you schedule
the time you'll need to get your data into Collect!.
You may find that it takes 3 hours to complete your
test. Then, you can simply schedule an afternoon.
If it takes you a few days to import your data, then you
will want to know this before allowing for just one night
to complete the task!

Another great bonus is that you end up with a seeded
database to use in the next step, working with
Collect! and your newly converted data. You and your
operators can learn Collect! reassured that this is just
a test. Mistakes are not a problem, as you will be
reimporting when you are finally ready to go live.
Let yourself and your operators play with this test
data, getting comfortable with Collect! without any
pressure of making errors using the new software.
They will love you for it. Their learning curve will be
much shorter and they will have a great opportunity
to learn how to work with your information in Collect!.
Most importantly you will not end up with the
nightmare, "There you are operators, we have
the 60,000 accounts in Collect!, get to work!"

Test, evaluate the process, document thoroughly, and
the conversion should go very smoothly with few
scary unknowns. Some users choose to run both
systems side by side for a given amount of time before
deciding on a date for the final conversion.